The present disclosure relates to an iris recognition apparatus and an operating method thereof, and more particularly, to an iris recognition apparatus using a plurality of image collection units, and an operating method thereof.
Electronic products such as computers or cellular phones include user's personal information in many cases. Also, the proliferation of electronic commerce using electronic products such as computers and cellular phones is a modern trend. Thus, the electronic products need to accurately identify users. To this end, a method of recognizing users by using passwords and IDs has been widely used. However, such a method has limitations in personal information protection and anti-hacking. Thus, many alternatives to replace it have been proposed.
Among others, a biometric system is being gradually commercialized. The biometrics refers to extracting bio information of individuals which is different from one person to another, and determining the individuals. In particular, a cellular phone including a fingerprint recognition device is being widely used through commercialization. However, an opinion that it is not difficult to copy fingerprint and thus there is still the risk of hacking is being presented. Thus, an iris recognition apparatus has received attention as a method of solving such a limitation.
The iris recognition apparatus is an apparatus that recognizes the iris of a person to identify the identity of the person. Such an iris recognition system has an advantage in that it is difficult to copy or forge iris unlike fingerprint. In order to perform iris recognition by using the iris recognition apparatus, the eyeball of a user for iris recognition should be located within an iris recognition operating range of the iris recognition apparatus.
Thus, the iris recognition apparatus may include a distance measuring device in order to determine whether the iris of a user is located with the iris recognition operating range. In this case, the distance measuring device may use a distance sensor that uses ultrasonic waves or laser beams. In this case, a distance to the eyeball means the distance from a part from which ultrasonic waves or laser beams are emitted to the eyeball of an information provider.
Since such a distance sensor needs an additional device, it may disturb the miniaturization of the iris recognition apparatus. Also, since such a distance sensor needs to be additionally installed at the iris recognition apparatus, it leads to an increase in production cost.
In general, an angle of view of an image collection unit used for iris recognition is relatively narrower than that of a camera used for picture capturing. Thus, the range of an image that the image collection unit may collect is relatively narrower than that of a camera used for picture capturing or the like Therefore, when iris is recognized, the eyeball needs to be located within a correct range. Thus, the iris recognition apparatus may cause inconvenience in that a user should correctly locate his or her eyeball to be within the iris recognition operating range that is narrow.